"It will be pretty tough for you people," he told a British lieutenant colonel, an amiable, rather rakish character. "They'll offer you a chance of getting out. If you don't take it, they'll tell you they'll blow London and half a dozen other cities off the map. They'll probably tell the French the same sort of thing. What do you think your people will do?"
"What do you think we'll do?" the lieutenant colonel answered. "We'll tell them to go to hell."
Beneath the political bickering, the unrelenting self-criticism, the pessimism there exists now, as there did in 1940, a fiery spirit. The British will never be vassals. Nor will they ever be easy allies. But if this alliance fails, there is little left on which an enduring peace can be built.
X. The British Economy and Its Problems
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.